Dreams May Come
by 3R1CHU
Summary: How do you live when your beating heart's been ripped out? How do you pick up the pieces and move on when you can barely get out of bed? Especially when that shattered heart suddenly and violently mends. Sam/Dean Coda to episode 5:22 Spoilers therein


**The first thing he feels is cold. It's unbelievable, like his chest is filled with ice water and his every breath feels like needles being driven into his lungs. In the back of his mind, he rationalizes that he's been what amounts to dead for months and that his body is no longer used to the sensation of blood flowing and breath sawing in and out of his lungs.**

**He staggers to his feet and lurches down the street, eyes tearing under even the weak moonlight. In Hell, there was no light. Nothing but a burned out shell of a sun that bathed everything in a smoky red light. Just a vast empty space lit the color of blood.**

**He shivers and fights back the gut-wrenching sensation of horror he always gets when he stops to think about where exactly he's been these past months. There's one thing on his mind, one fully formed thought: find Dean.**

The town was always silent at four a.m. Dean's boss at the garage didn't know how early his model employee showed up or even why he left the house so early. The man reasoned that, if he'd had an old lady as good-looking as Lisa, well, he'd find an excuse to linger in bed every morning. Except Lisa wasn't Dean's old lady nor did they sleep in the same bed, much to Lisa's chagrin.

Dean unlocked the garage's glass doors and started the coffee. When the boss came in at five, he'd appreciate it. Although, Dean wasn't looking forward to another one of Bill's rants about Lisa's body and what the fuck was wrong with Dean that he wasn't attracted. Maybe he'd jam the ear buds of the iPod Sam left behind in his ears.

As always, the thought of his younger brother was like a shard of ice pushing into Dean's heart. He closed his eyes quick against the burn of the tears he'd been refusing to shed since his Sammy vanished into the Pit. Dean refused to believe this was the end. Sam would find his way back to him. He had to.

Dean pushed the headphones in and switched the stupid iPod on. As he'd suspected it was loaded with a bunch of Sam's 'chick shit', most of which was sappy ballads, and, to Dean's further horror, pretty bearable. He was halfway through the song list when he decided to check out the playlists.

There were the usual pre-loads, a few marked for workouts, even one marked 'Jess' (Dean stayed away from that one). Then Dean's finger landed on one titled simply 'Dean'. He was oddly touched even though the idea of Sam actually handpicking songs for a playlist dedicated to him was unbelievably girly. He'd have teased Sam for months if he'd been there.

But he wasn't. So Dean buttoned the device into his work shirt pocket and tried not to think about who had picked the songs and why. That was the only way he survived, by forgetting Sam had ever been.

**Slowly, as he travels across the country, searching- always searching, his mind creeps cautiously back to him. Memories slowly filter in, mostly as he sleeps. There are a few confusing images of himself with a beautiful blonde girl, but always his thoughts return to Dean. Dean about whom he knows nothing but his name and face and the constant painful pull in his chest that he knows is his heart guiding him back to Dean.**

**Eventually he comes back to himself enough to know the simplest rules of the world. He needs money and food and clothes. He can't ask people for them, must earn them. And he does. In some of the most base and disgusting ways he can think of. He prays idly, as he's on his knees, some stranger's dick in his mouth or his ass, that Dean never finds out. That he never knows how he sullied himself for him because Dean is the exact kind of self-depreciating fool who'd hate himself for it.**

**But, as the memories come, so does the tiniest, niggling feeling that he is forgetting something.**

Dean blew up at Lisa after a month. He was shocked she didn't haul off and hit him, even more shocked when she didn't kick his ass out. But the biggest, jaw-dropping shock came when she sank to her knees and held him close, whispering about Sam and how she understands. Which of course made him rage worse because she could never understand. He hadn't just lost his brother that day. He'd lost his beating heart, his reason for living because his job was to protect Sam and if there was no Sam, then Dean had no reason to live.

Dean played the part though. He drove Ben home from soccer practice and helped Lisa out when she needed him. He drank mimosas and chatted up boring suburbanites about the weather and gas prices when he and Lisa were invited to neighborhood parties. No one ever looked deep enough to see that he was faking it.

One night, after a barbeque and way too many margaritas, Lisa pulled him into her room and locked the door. Dean swallowed hard and knew what was being asked of him. The question wasn't if he could, it was if he should. Besides feeling like a jackass because she was drunk, Dean couldn't help thinking of Ben and how he was just getting used to Dean in the house and how much this could wreck everything.

Then Lisa was on her knees and her mouth was on his cock and Dean's brain shorted out into auto-pilot. His hands tangled in her dark hair, made duller by the shadows littering the room, and for a moment he could imagine it was someone else before him. Someone else who worked his cock not out of drunken lust but pure need. Someone who wanted him because he was Dean Winchester and not because he was a man who they thought could make everything right in their busted up life.

When Lisa looked up in response to his soft encouragements, he could have sworn her eyes were hazel green. Dean's heart seemed to stop and his dick throbbed. He didn't see Lisa anymore. He saw hazel eyes and a mop of brown hair and soft lips wrapped around his cock and his mind supplied the rest.

Sam's mouth on him, his tongue swirling over the head of Dean's cock and teasing him ever closer to orgasm. It was Sam who pulled off him with a wicked grin and climbed on top of Dean, pushing him deep inside his body with a breathless moan of need. It was Sam, not Lisa, who rode him slow and steady, panting obscenities against his skin. It was Sam's body he exploded deep inside of and his brother who kissed his lips and told him it was alright and why was he crying?

**He's in Illinois when it hits him. He slams the brakes on the crappy car he bought three states over on a forged credit card and nearly swerves off into a cow pasture. He jams the car into park, ignoring the whine of the dying engine, and stares straight ahead.**

**Suddenly he's five years old and Dean is nine. They're staring in terror at the closed motel room door. There's tiny scratching, like something tying to get in. (It's the wind rubbing dead leaves around, he remembers, but only later.) Dean pushes him back onto the bed when he tries to get up and look. He hits his head and starts to cry.**

**Then Dean's there and there's nothing but the smell of stolen dime store chewing gum, cheap detergent, and the scent of Dad's leather jacket which Dean wears whenever John isn't around. His scrawny arms are around him and he stops crying, lulled into sleep by the one voice which has been his since he was a baby.**

**He remembers waking up in Dean's bed while Dean explains to John in hushed tones what happened and how he felt. John looks at Dean appraisingly and says, graver than he'll ever hear him even as a teenager, "Protect Sammy, Dean. He's the only little brother you have."**

**Oh, but that was a lie, wasn't it? His lips curl up in a grimace of pain as he remembers Adam's broken body, landing in the cage beside him. John Winchester's bastard child, a boy who should never have been brought into their world, a boy he was insanely jealous of Dean's interest in.**

**Sam slowly uncurls himself from over the steering wheel, testing the air as though his final realization has somehow changed the very air he breathes. He swipes at his uselessly streaming eyes and sits up straighter.**

**He's in love with his brother, his brother he made promise to live a normal life, the brother he fell into Hell to protect and has been chasing after since he clawed his way back topside. Sam knows it's wrong, knows no one will ever understand, but he doesn't need their approval. All he needs is Dean. Because where other men have God and other children had Mom and Dad, Sam has Dean. Dean is his Beginning and End-All.**

**The only thing still eluding him is whether or not Dean feels the same way.**

Dean drank himself into a near-coma the day after his night with Lisa. He felt sorry for her, in an abstract way. She thought she'd pushed him too hard or too fast, but that wasn't the case. She'd only shown Dean a truth he'd denied since he hit fourteen.

Dean wanted his brother. Always had, if the truth was told, but God, Sammy was his brother. His helpless little brother who used to be so tiny and who needed Dean like he needed the sun in the sky. Then, when Dean had resigned himself to a life spent, if not with Sam, then beside him, Sam had left. Sam had run away from him and their life and everything they'd ever been. Dean had hated him for so long for it.

But John's disappearance had broken that bitter wall down and Dean had gone to his brother. Sam wasn't the way he remembered, never would be again after Jess, but at least he was with Dean again. Dean hated himself for the thought the instant it hit him. He felt so guilty he actually snuck out of the motel and into a church, doing thirty Hail Mary's before returning to bed.

Dean threw the glass bottle into the wall and sank to his knees. He curled up against the chair and sobbed until he felt like he wasn't crying so much as trying to throw his lungs up. Then Ben walked in and Dean didn't know what to do. He was completely dumbstruck and, wonder of wonders, Ben _got that_. He went to Dean's side and they sat in silence until Dean had it together enough to clean up and get Ben some ice cream.

He packed his stuff that night. He couldn't stay and poison Lisa's family any longer.

**Sam stands under the street light for the fifth time that week. It blows out, of course, because electricity is tricky around him now. He can't stand too near for too long and definitely not if he's upset. Seeing Dean, eating with Ben and Lisa, living the apple-pie-slice-of-the-American-Dream Sam made him promise to live eats at him.**

**He has a warped vision of the two of them, him and Dean, living in a house like this one. Dean working in a garage, Sam running a psychic shop like Missouri, and the two of them together every night. Fuck, there's even a dog lying on the floorboards. A regular picture perfect postcard of America. If America was a Bosch painting.**

**Sam spins on his heel, streetlight busting and raining glass down where he'd been standing as he stalks down the street. This was a mistake. Dean doesn't need him. Never has.**

**Then, wonder of wonders, the door opens. Sam barely has time to hide when Dean pokes his head out the door. He's looking at the busted streetlight and cussing a blue streak. Lisa comes out onto the porch after him and they're bickering about calling the street department when Dean's head comes up and he's suddenly looking straight at Sam.**

**Sam sinks back further into the shadows and Dean's face pales. Lisa comes to his side and helps him back inside. Sam can hear her asking frantic questions but all he can hear is Dean's shaking voice as he whispers, "Just a fucking trick."**

Dean rolled over deeper into the covers. The insistent banging on the door wouldn't stop though and he stumbled from the bed and down the stairs. His head was swimming as he tried to recall just how much beer he'd slammed last night. All he knew was he'd seen something in the gloom when he'd gone outside to check the blown streetlight. Something that lurked and stared with achingly familiar soulful eyes.

He'd freaked. Lisa had been terrified when he'd pounded beer after beer, mumbling about salt lines and how fucked up his life was that all he had to offer her and Ben as protection from the monsters was a thin line of mineral. She'd retreated upstairs and locked her door so Dean had collapsed in the guest room.

As he tripped through the house he realized that she was at work, which meant Ben was at school. Dean would have to check the schedule on the fridge, make sure he wasn't supposed to pick the kid up. He rubbed his eyes once and opened the door.

"Sammy….?"

**Sam hates the way Dean's looking at him, half hopeful and half enraged. He needs to think of something quick, some way to reassure Dean he's not some hellspawn who found Sam's meatsuit and decided to take it for a joyride. As he's racking his brain for a memory, it hits him all at once. He steps over the threshold and smiles triumphantly at his brother.**

**Dean, however, backs away and says, "Nice try, asshole. But there's no salt under there."**

**Sam is floored. The idea that Dean would completely abandon every aspect of their lives has never crossed his mind. No salt means no holy water, silver blades, or even crucifixes in the house. No way to prove himself but his own words. He is, at the least, reassured that this means a gun is nowhere close at hand in case Dean should decide to shoot first, ask questions later.**

**"Dean," he tries, mouth dry as sand in the Arizona deserts he's never seen. "Dean, it's me."**

**"The hell it is!" Dean spits out. "You- you died, Sammy! I watched you fall in the Pit myself." The last is said with bitter self-hatred and Sam feels his heart speed up. "You self-sacrificing son of a bitch…"**

**Sam's breath stops in his chest and his gaze falls to his brother's bare chest. The amulet is there, laying in the center of Dean's chest, just as it always has been. Sam reaches out with trembling fingers for it. Dean backs away and it cuts Sam to the quick.**

**"Not that," he says. "Anything but that, you hell-bitch."**

**"Jerk," Sam snaps in response, the insult automatic. Dean's eyes widen imperceptibly and he takes a tiny step closer. Sam watches, hardly daring to breathe.**

**"Sammy…? That really you in there, man?" Dean's hands come up and cup his face. They're close enough to kiss, though Sam knows that won't happen, and it makes him breathe faster. Dean's eyes are wide and Sam suspects tears at the corners, but Dean blinks them back furiously.**

**Sam doesn't speak, just nods. It's enough for Dean who wraps his arms around Sam's shoulders and pulls him in close. Sam holds himself rigid for a moment, despite the fact that he's in the one place he's been dreaming of since he clawed his way out of Hell, then he collapses in on himself.**

**Finally, he's back among the living.**

Dean forced Sam to sit down on Lisa's over-stuffed, over-patterned couch and fussed for a solid hour. He was treading dangerously close to chick-flick territory, but he didn't care. His baby brother had come back to him and was warm and alive and where Dean could touch him and that was all that mattered in the world.

Sam had tried to speak a few times, but Dean spoke over him. He told stories and caught Sam up on his life in the same over-bright tinny voice and was so damn pleasant he wasn't sure how Sam hadn't punched his ass out yet.

Sam caught Dean's elbow and forced him to sit next to him.

"You… are so incredibly stupid," Sam said, tilting his head and smiling so his dimples stood out. Dean was about to snap out a retort when Sam dipped his head and kissed Dean hard on the mouth. Dean was sure his jaw dropped and he heard a soft, startled noise come from his throat, but Sam didn't let him think about it. His hands cupped Dean's jaw and when he pulled back, Sam's eyes were closed.

"Dude…." Dean said, swallowing hard. "You kiss like a girl."

Sam's grin was infectious. "I love you too, jackass."


End file.
